MA in Textile Practice. How can archives be used to enhance embroidery practice methodologies ?

Stain of 71 Women.

An archive is an accumulation of historical records , the archive that interested me contained no fabric or object's, only paper documentation spanning from one side of the world to another. I wondered if by investigating and researching specific embroidery stitches could they be used metaphorically. Could embroidery then be used to creative a story by piecing together fragments of data and would the stitch be enough to convey the meaning of the archives ? Or could the embroidery be used for much more complex expression's that hide within archives, one of time, complexity, identity, the stitching of rejected remnants of society?

Comments

A bit of reading is good for the soul.

My dear husband bought this book the other day as he thought it would be of interest. Factual books I normally read during the day, but I was intrigued and excited to start it as soon as he gave it to me , it has become my night reading ..only because I have more time. The book written by dress historian Kate Strasdin, after she was given the diary , the story behind that in itself is something I dream would happen to me in my lifetime. The book is beautifully written, it has such a gentle tone to it, packed full of social history it follows Anne Sykes journey. It is so clever as nothing is really known about Anne and certainly the diary gives away no clues, but Anne in a sense is invisible but you read on feeling completely drawn in to the story. The photo's of the swatches are lovely and there is a QR code in the back to enable you to see more, these are stunning and is the icing on the cake.

Collage

Collage I find it so hard to work on images and then rip them up and collage them to create another image. The fear of it all going wrong and just looking awful is what stops me, why when I am happy with what I have produced should I push it. I also find it hard to put things together so I am going to practice this, maybe little steps making small collages. I have come across Seth Apter's 5 principals of collage https://www.clothpaperscissors.com/blog/seth-apters-5-principles-of-collage/ I am going to have a read of it, make notes I think it will help. Looking up collage historically I came across Kurt Schwitters. I was quite drawn to his work, I found the text interesting and the placement of papers, which he followed no rule for, making his print work exhibits having a lack of order: artwork, and text are placed in unexpected areas. As a result, the space left between draws equal attention to the text and images themselves.

Experiments

Copper and Elderberries I was very lucky to receive from Alice Fox her wonderful Book Natural Processes in Textile Art: from Rust Dyeing to Found Objects www.textileartist.org/book-review-natural-processes-in-textile-art-by-alice-fox , this book is not only very informative and beautifully written with some amazing photographs but gently guides you through the process of mark making using so many objects you would just walk by or not even think would be capable of dyeing paper or fabric.

Bridget Harris

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